International Community Guidelines for Sharing and Reusing Quality
Information of Individual Earth Science Datasets
Abstract
The knowledge of data quality and the quality of the associated
information, including metadata, is critical for data use and reuse.
Assessment of data and metadata quality is key for ensuring credible
available information, establishing a foundation of trust between the
data provider and various downstream users, and demonstrating compliance
with requirements established by funders and federal policies. Data
quality information should be consistently curated, traceable, and
adequately documented to provide sufficient evidence to guide users to
address their specific needs. The quality information is especially
important for data used to support decisions and policies, and for
enabling data to be truly findable, accessible, interoperable, and
reusable (FAIR). Clear documentation of the quality assessment protocols
used can promote the reuse of quality assurance practices and thus
support the generation of more easily-comparable datasets and quality
metrics. To enable interoperability across systems and tools, the data
quality information should be machine-actionable. Guidance on the
curation of dataset quality information can help to improve the
practices of various stakeholders who contribute to the collection,
curation, and dissemination of data. This presentation introduces
international community guidelines to curate data quality information
that is consistent with the FAIR principles throughout the entire data
life cycle and inheritable by any derivative product. Supportive case
studies demonstrate the applicability of the proposed guidelines.